Bolivian national caught with cocaine worth ₹1.5 cr
MUMBAI: Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) officials have arrested a 55-year-old Bolivian woman for allegedly smuggling 312 grams of cocaine estimated to be worth ₹1.5 crore. The drugs were tightly packed in 13 condoms and were consumed by the accused to conceal it.
The Bolivian national, Ribera A Delicia, was intercepted at the Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) on Monday after she arrived here from Addis Ababa.
Based on suspicion, she was sent to JJ Hospital for medical examination. “At the hospital, she ejected 13 tightly tied condoms stuffed with high-quality cocaine in liquid form. When these condoms were cut open, 312 grams of cocaine was recovered. She was placed under arrest on Friday after she was discharged,” said a DRI official.
“Smuggling cocaine in such a way is very dangerous. A few years ago, a Nigerian woman had died while smuggling cocaine in packets inside her body. Few
packets got torn and she died of an overdose,” an officer said.
Delicia admitted to having smuggled the cocaine on the direction of a Nigerian national based in Brazil. “The Nigerian national had offered her money for the task. She was given an option of smuggling the drugs
either to India or Macau. She was well aware that smuggling drugs is a criminal act,” a DRI source said.
On Friday a local court sent her to judicial custody. She has been charged under sections of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act.
MUMBAI: The Bombay high court (HC) on Wednesday acquitted a woman convicted by the Nashik sessions court in 1998, for allegedly killing her two children and trying to commit suicide.
On August 29, 1998, an additional sessions judge at Nashik had convicted Radhabai Rokade, for killing her three-year-old son Dnyaneshwar and one-and-halfyear-old daughter Rupali by throwing them into a well. She was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders and was also convicted for attempting to commit suicide, as she too jumped in the well, but survived.
The trial court had also accepted the prosecution’s claim that she took the step after being vexed with the ill-treatment by her husband and in-laws.
The division bench of justices SS Shinde and VG Bisht at the HC, however, found that there was no basis for believing that relations between Radhabai and her husband were strained or she was harassed at her matrimonial home. The judges reversed her conviction and set her free after finding several flaws in the prosecution’s case. Particularly, judges found fault with two star witnesses in the case. One of whom was an eyewitness, who had claimed to have seen the woman dragging her children towards the well.
The judges also noted that the eyewitness admitted that she was over 1 km away from the incident spot and therefore could not have witnessed it. The second witness admitted that the woman was unconscious when he tried to rescue her.
The incident had taken place on June 8, 1997 when it was raining heavily and the area around the well was muddy and slippery. The judges said the possibility of the three falling into the well accidentally cannot be ruled out.